<p>I’m working on a project for my Cold War history class, so I’m trying to set up a little Q&A with a parent add some depth to my presentation. I figured, what better place to find well-spoken adults than College Confidential! I’d appreciate it if any parents that were older kids/teens during the Kennedy administration could do a short online interview with me. Just leave a post here or send me a message if you’re interested. Thanks!</p>
<p>I was in Kindergarten when Kennedy was elected … and what I remember is that he looked like a much nicer man than Mr. Nixon. I was in third grade when he was killed. </p>
<p>I’m guessing that lots of the parents on here were not much older –
I mean it was FIFTY YEARS AGO. You need to talk to OUR parents!</p>
<p>Yes, second grader in 1963.
I do remember that November day, and the TV coverage. That’s about it.</p>
<p>I remember the cuban missle crisis, discussing it with my parents and following it in the news. I was 9.</p>
<p>^^I was 6 and also discussed it with my parents, who were horrified to learn I assumed the US was going to lose a nuclear war with the Soviet Union at any moment, that I was pretty sure hiding under my desk wasn’t going to do the trick, that I thought we needed to start building a bomb shelter immediately… not that it would really keep us safe since those who survived would be living under evil foreign rule. After that the tv was turned off during the dinner hour. I don’t recall any newspapers lying around either for several years. Except for Sunday comics</p>
<p>I was 12 when Kennedy was assassinated. I remember a lot about that time, and I also remember the Cuban missile crisis.</p>
<p>I was 15 when he was shot. I remember the assassination weekend very well. Feel free to PM me with questions.</p>
<p>I was 11 years old when it happened. In 1963 you could only watch television in the evenings in the country I’m coming from (one channel only). There were a few radio broadcasters (some of them commercial and fun). </p>
<p>We were never allowed to watch television, to listen to the radio, to play a record while having dinner. All that changed the day Kennedy was assassinated (and the days thereafter). Suddenly everyone was glued to the radio and television. My brothers and I did not even have to sit down at the dining table for our meals. It wasn’t until the Moon landing in 1969 that we were allowed to so again. </p>
<p>When something dramatic is happening in the world (like the very recent tsunami in Japan) the older generation in my country is immediately referring to how they felt that November day in 1963.</p>
<p>I was in 7th grade and I clearly remember the principal coming into the classroom to tell my teacher about President Kennedy. I would be happy to answer questions.</p>
<p>@Mattmoosemom: I was in 7th grade too in a Catholic school. It was the first time I ever saw nuns cry.</p>
<p>I was in the 5th grade on the day JFK was assassinated.
Our Principal made a brief announcement in a very grave voice, over the loudspeaker, that President Kennedy was dead. Several students cheered. I think the teacher was too stunned to respond.</p>
<p>I went home to find my father had returned early from work and was watching TV. He did not say much. We were an Irish Catholic family. The memory of this day contrasts starkly in my mind with the memory of the euphoric night when we had gathered as a family around the same B&W television to watch the election returns. </p>
<p>I also remember clambering under our desks for elementary school air raid drills. Every day at lunch time, to enter the cafeteria, we filed past a little room where we could see cans of water piled in case of emergency. A yellow and black sign marked this basement area as a fall-out shelter. </p>
<p>One of my scariest memories is of a little postcard I found one day in the mail pile. It was a notification that houses like ours provided inadequate protection in case of nuclear attack. We were advised to contact some company, I think, to evalute our upgrade options. </p>
<p>So to understand the emotional impact of the JFK assassination, you have to consider both the level of anxiety in the country at the time and the appeal of his personal charisma to many people.</p>
<p>I remember the Cuban missile crisis, and thinking that this man was nuts.</p>
<p>One wonders what would have happened without the intelligence capability that allowed us to discover what was happening before it was completed.</p>
<p>In fall of 1960 I began 3rd grade in our parish’s just opened Cath school. They held my gr 3-5 in what was going to be the convent in later years, because the school had not yet been built (that happened while I was in 5th grade; we watched it going up from our classroom window). </p>
<p>After much savings & many fund raisers, the parish had bought a somewhat in-need-of- work old estate with a mansion, for the future school grounds & convent. The 3 - 5 nuns had to live in what was once a grand mansion, and also teach first 3, then 5 grades in that building. The downstairs rooms were the classrooms & the nurse’s office. They were large high ceilinged rooms with school desks & portable blackboards in them.</p>
<p>During the missile crisis, we had bomb drills—we filed down to the basement of the mansion—very dark & scary—and sat on the floor by class with our arms over our heads. The school had sent letters home to the families requiring our parents to send a 2 week supply of canned foods (most of which we did not like), toilet paper, water, extra clothes, and playing cards, for every kid who lived more than 2 miles from the school (and if you lived closer, you were supposed to walk home in the event of attack). When we had drills, we sat near the stacks of boxes that had each child’s name on them, saying the Rosary (having a lot of kids say the Rosary is a great quiet-maker) — today I realize the nuns were praying that they would never be stuck with us for two weeks down in that basement! They were mostly in their 20s except for the 30 something principal. </p>
<p>Because of these supply lists all going home from schools at once, you could not buy a regular deck of cards anywhere in the county. My Mom gave up and bought pinochle decks — she said if the US & Russia started throwing bombs, we would not be playing cards anyway.</p>
<p>For the Kennedy assassination—I was at the same school, and was home recovering from chicken pox. My Mom was on the phone with the school nurse, discussing the state of my pox blisters and whether they were healed enough for me to return to school the following week. The nurse told her something just had been said on the radio in her office about the President being shot. They got off the phone and my Mom turned on the TV.</p>
<p>She heard enough—then she turned off the TV and she & I got on our knees in the front hall, facing the little wood statue of St Mary that was on the wall of the stair landing. We were praying the Rosary for the President. I don’t remember how long we did that—or when she decided to turn the TV back on. Or whether the phone interrupted us.</p>
<p>Then we spent the weekend watching the gloomy (black & white) TV coverage—I was still feeling sickish from chicken pox. The doctor came to check me over & pronounce me fit to return to school, I suppose on Saturday. That was in the days of house calls! </p>
<p>My parents had been very mixed about voting for J Kennedy. My father did not like his Dad Joe & he felt (correctly) they were trying to buy a Presidency. Not every Irish Catholic voter was for him.</p>
<p>But my Dad had served in the PT boats, skippered one of them same as JFK had, and he knew what that war experience had been like for JFK & his crew–all of it, not just the wrecking of the boat and the swim to the island. He admired that aspect of the man. To serve in that branch took real courage & grit–and we now know he was ill the entire time. I think by the time of the missile crisis he liked him better.</p>
<p>When JFK was assassinated, my parents believed the motive was the pending civil rights bill, and the fact he was Irish descent & Catholic. The information had not yet come out about Lee Harvey Oswald’s troubled background. </p>
<p>This was a period of the church bombing in which the little girls were killed, and the police attacks on civil rights marchers. We saw these on the news pretty often. So you can see why people would assume an assassination came from that quarter.</p>
<p>Surf and search “Bay of Pigs.” Also, see if you can find Benno Schmidt’s book on the JFK administration’s civil rights activities [or lack thereof]. A audio file recording of a fascinating conversation/argument between JFK and Governor Ross Barnett of Mississippi may be available. See if you can find it or a transcript. Barnett didn’t know he was being recorded.</p>
<p>I campaigned for JFK at 13 and watched him speak at the cow palace in San Francisco. I was 16 when he was shot and remember it all. I shook RFK’s hand when he came to speak at USC and remember hearing sirens and helicopters on the night he was shot. Times that stirred the soul.</p>
<p>I too am older…and my perspective is a bit different. </p>
<p>During the 1960 election, I attended a Catholic grade school. Some of the nuns had pictures of Kennedy on their classroom walls. The pastor favored Nixon. Indeed, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops more or less endorsed him. The most shocking thing about this to me was that the NUNS were daring to express opinions different than the PASTOR. </p>
<p>When Kennedy was elected, I was euphoric. I wanted to go to his inauguration. We lived close enough for that to be feasible, but it was a bitter cold day and my mom refused. I couldn’t understand why. I was furious. I watched it on TV, which my mom insisted was “better.”</p>
<p>It’s hard for folks to understand what it was like back then. I don’t want to get into a political discussion, but just as the “birthers” keep insisting that Obama was born in Kenya, certain elements of the population kept insisting that if Kennedy were elected president, he’d be taking orders from the Pope. My dad was in the military. Most officers back then were Southern Protestants and some, not even realizing my dad was Catholic, would talk about how they would cash it in if he was elected because there was just no way the nation could survive with a Catholic Commander in Chief. Look up the West Virginia primary…it was a true turning point. As I remember it, Kennedy was talking to a group of miners when one asked if it was true that he was Catholic. I like to think Kennedy’s reply was spontaneous, but I’m sure he was prepped. He said something to the effect that when he went into the navy, when he got assigned to the PT boat, when his brother risked his life and died in World War II, nobody asked about religion. Then he said Yes, he was Catholic. But the words he used made the miner feel mortified that he had asked. </p>
<p>Again, not trying to start a political argument, but I’ve thought that’s why Ted Kennedy got so involved with Obama. He had a better sense than most of what it was like to deal with bigotry. Now, in truth, many Catholics probably voted for Kennedy simply because he WAS Catholic and our day had finally come, just as some African-Americans probably voted for Obama for similar reasons. </p>
<p>My dad got stationed overseas. We were on a military ship in the middle of the Atlantic when the Berlin wall went up. Kennedy issued an executive order. No more dependents to Europe, at least for the time being. We were more than half way to Bremerhaven. The captain of the ship radioed for orders…Should he turn the ship around and head back to NY or continue to Bremerhaven? Would dependents be disembarked and then flown back to the states? As you can imagine, that question was not the #1 issue of importance back in the US. So for about 36 hours, we drifted in the North Atlantic waiting to hear our fate. Finally, it came. Those dependents already on their way could proceed to Europe. </p>
<p>So, I was living on a US military base in Europe during the Cuban missle crisis and when Kennedy was shot. The rest of the world remembers "Ich bin ein Berliner."I got up before daylight and piled on a bus with lots of other people and headed to Flughaven. I remember this man way way in front of me in a huge, huge stadium, talking to US. I don’t think the speech was televised. But in the midst of that trip, Kennedy did speak to the troops --and their kids–and so I can say I saw Jack Kennedy live and in person once. </p>
<p>If you think crawling under your desk was bad…You’ve no idea of what our lives were like. Looking back, I’m surprised that my more than slightly highly strung self didn’t live in fear all the time. The conditions we lived in were more than bizarre. </p>
<p>Every now and then, a sound truck would announce that the Soviets had invaded West Berlin and our dads would go running out in full gear to get in trucks and go away. Most of the time, they’d be back in a few hours. Once or twice a year, they’d be gone a few weeks. (The idea was to make sure that they always were ready to go in case it was the real thing.) We had this big walk in closet in our house, and my dad’s gear was in it. It included a couple of loaded guns. The door was never locked. In the event of an actual mobilization, there wasn’t time to find bullets, load a gun, risk that a door might stick or whatever. But believe me, my father made it very clear that if any of us went near that room he would beat us . And my dad wasn’t into corporal punishment at all. </p>
<p>There were no cell phones back then. If my dad went off base, he had to notify someone he was doing so before leaving. Then he had to call in at least once every two hours. We plotted trips to downtown based on where the public phones were located. </p>
<p>We had this absolutely insane evacuation plan. It’s so funny now I can’t believe we didn’t crack up laughing then. Because you see, if the Soviets invaded, the dependents were supposed to get into cars and drive, following a prescribed route. We had these special ID cards, in addition to our regular ID cards and sealed envelopes with all the information we would need for our escape. One of my classmates, who was not yet a teenager, had two illicit guns his dad had given him, “to shoot any *&^ Kraut” who got in the way. </p>
<p>We had this new science teacher. (I went to a DODD school, one for military brats.) Nobody had explained about the sound trucks. So when there was a sound truck announcing that the Soviets had invaded West Berlin and everyone had to get to their duty stations immediately, she freaked. (we were used to it.) So, one of the guys in the class told her we all had to go to our shelters. (What better way to get out of class?) </p>
<p>“Shelter? What shelter?” “Don’t you have your shelter entry pass? You should have gotten one.” The poor woman was terrified. He’d take her with him to his and maybe he could explain and they’d let her in. By this time, the rest of the class couldn’t help it…we all cracked up laughing. Looking back…I can understand her fear, but at the time we thought she was a gullible idiot. </p>
<p>And then there was the Cuban missle crisis and Kennedy’s assasination. But this post is already too long.</p>
<p>I was in 2nd grade when Kennedy was shot, with a 2nd grader’s fuzzy memory. I am really enjoying reading other’s recollections, though! Thanks so much for sharing.</p>
<p>"One wonders what would have happened without the intelligence capability that allowed us to discover what was happening before it was completed. "</p>
<p>Thank heavens Khruschev forced a gentleman’s agreement from Kennedy that the latter would never try to invade Cuba again.</p>
<p>Wow, jonri you are such a great historical source… please, please write your memories down and find a way to get them archived.</p>